Waltzing with Death
by Masquerading as Quality
Summary: When a threat to Earth encourages Aurora to start a new life on Thessia, she feels she's found her paradise. But even the crown jewel of the galaxy has its problems: an Ardat-Yakshi has escaped custody, and a young human outsider finds herself in the middle of a conflict as old as the Asari people. [Malora Mass Effect AU. Currently a one-shot but I think I'll continue it.]


**A/N:** I've had some serious writer's block for a few months now, and this was so much fun, it really pulled me out of my rut! Response to a prompt for a Malora Mass Effect AU, because I just finished ME3 and it's all I can think about. I tried to be pretty clear about the worldbuilding for anyone who isn't familiar with the games. Currently it works as a one-shot but I think I'd like to turn it into a longer piece. Feedback would be much appreciated!

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"Well then," said the mechanical voice of an Asari Virtual Intelligence, "I believe I have all the information I need, Aurora. The Embassy looks forward to your arrival."

Aurora had dreamed all her life of adventuring away from Earth. Space travel had been so new when she was growing up—it was rather overwhelming to think of how far humanity had progressed in such a short time.

Her opportunity did not come in the form of happy news. Earth was rumoured to be a major target for a forthcoming attack by mysterious creatures from somewhere beyond the Relays, and Aurora's parents (along with the parents of many of her acquaintances) wanted her out of harm's way. Aurora and her contemporaries were just starting out in the world. They didn't have long-term jobs or other responsibilities tying them to Earth. They could get out before anything happened, if anything happened, and return when the threat had passed.

Deeply uneasy though she was regarding the reasoning behind her parents' sudden and preoccupying interest in her desire to travel the galaxy, a part of Aurora could not help but to give in to excitement. Aurora's parents had sent her information on human settlements on all kinds of planets, most similar enough to Earth that humans didn't need many special accommodations, but a few so wildly disparate as to send Aurora's imagination into overdrive.

The planet that finally caught her attention was not one her parents had recommended to her: Thessia. It was the homeworld of a species called the Asari. They were an all-female humanoid species with blue skin and tentacles on their heads, nearly all of whom were born with the biotic abilities human science had spent untold resources learning to replicate. Thessia's scientific and technological advances were awe-inspiring, and it had hardly ever in its entire history seen any war, internal or external. Aurora's parents were wary of her choice to move to a place where there wasn't a significant human population, but the promise of a conflict-free society fit their criteria, and Aurora immediately set to work making arrangements for her move.

These preparations mostly involved talking to VIs, Virtual Intelligence programs made to look and sound like Asari. Humans were understandably wary of virtual intelligence, particularly after the war between the Quarian race and their Geth machines, who had achieved self-awareness and revolted, became common knowledge, and even more so after the legendary Commander Shepard had brought back news of giant self-aware machines called Reapers. One didn't see many VIs on Earth, but on other planets and space stations, they seemed curiously ubiquitous.

As it turned out, the Asari were very welcoming to female temporary workers of all species. Through vidcom correspondences, Aurora was able to secure an office job at the Galactic Relations Embassy and a small apartment in the employee complex nearby with considerable ease. She'd only spoken briefly with the Asari who would be her boss, Tesizma, and with her landlady, and both had been almost exceedingly accommodating.

The whole process seemed to fly by. One minute, she was flipping through some pictures of Thessia and some famous Asari, the next minute it was time to say goodbye. The sadness that overcame her as she boarded the spacecraft was not the sort she had anticipated. She'd realized while she was packing her things that she had very little she really wanted to hang onto; now she realized as she waved goodbye to her parents that she had very little to say goodbye to.

The journey was long, and space travel was exhausting and disorienting, but finally setting eyes on the Asari homeworld up close and in person made up for every bit of it. The city of Serrice was breathtaking, Aurora's accommodations were far better than anything she could have expected, and despite some initial loneliness, Aurora could not shake the feeling that this new life she had crashed into was tailor-made for her.

There was a deep and profound serenity that seeped into her life gradually, almost so subtle she did not notice its arrival, yet so utterly divorced from the way life was on Earth that once she had noticed it, she could not help but to see it in every aspect of her existence: she sometimes went several days without so much as seeing or hearing the voice of a man.

The threat of crime or violence was next to none. She could walk about at any time or day or night, wearing whatever she pleased, with absolutely no reservations. Every organization, every business, everything was owned and operated by women, and as the Asari had never known what it was to be made to feel less than a man, they did not tolerate the kind of overbearing behaviour Aurora hadn't even realized she'd internalized as normal. If a man was being overbearing or creepy or threatening or offensive, he was asked to leave immediately. Not just the establishment, _the planet_.

The Asari were not entirely without their own internal conflicts, Aurora learned. There was, mostly among older Asari (older in this case meaning upwards of 1,000 years), a bias against pureblooded Asari children. Asari were capable of producing offspring with anyone of any species, as their mating process involved some kind of melding of DNA and invariably produced a genetic Asari, and apparently the majority of Asari chose this method of procreation.

It was an odd bias for any species, as far as Aurora's limited experience could deduce. Most species had at the very least a healthy suspicion of other species and a preference for their own kind. But from the conversations she'd been privy to in which this strange proclivity had made itself apparent, Aurora was unable to discern what might have led to such an odd bias. Then, one day, an alarm sounded in the Galactic Relations Embassy.

Outside Aurora's office, panic ensued. A flood of Asari workers and freshly-processed alien visitors stampeded through the hallway as though running from some imminent threat. Perhaps it was only in this moment that Aurora truly realized the extent to which fear had ceased to play an ever-present role in her day to day life. She felt deeply unsettled, like a child with no concept of the world's evils, as though she hadn't fully realized that anything could possibly go wrong on Thessia before this moment.

"What's going on?" she called in the direction of her boss's office.

Tesizma emerged, Omni-tool glowing upon her wrist. "An Ardat-Yakshi is at large," she said, in a strange, hollow tone.

"What's that?"

Tesizma's eyes were glazed over, as though lost in a distant memory. "Most of them aren't dangerous. It's...they live in seclusion, in monasteries off-world and contribute to society in what ways they can...we're told they live very comfortable lives."

Aurora stood from her desk. "But what are they? What does that mean, Ardat-Yakshi?"

The movement drew Tesizma's focus. She blinked twice, shook her head violently, and the glaze was gone from her eyes. "They have a genetic condition. It's only found in pureblooded Asari, and their strength and danger varies widely. When the Ardat-Yakshi meld, they overpower their victims' minds. They draw energy and power from the melding, and their victims..."

Aurora felt paralyzed. "Do they die?"

Again, it was as though Tesizma had forgotten Aurora existed for a moment. She cradled the wrist that held her Omni-tool to her chest like an amulet, looked up again, and refocused. "Not always," she said. "As I said, the condition varies. At worst, the melding is lethal; at best, the victim would fall terribly ill, perhaps suffer some brain damage. I don't know the specifics—Ardat-Yakshi are not permitted to live on Thessia. Once they reach adulthood and the condition is discovered, they must either relocate to a monastery or face execution."

"Then what is one doing here?"

"They're permitted to visit the homeworld. Every Asari should know her homeworld in this age of advanced space travel. But..." Tesizma shook her head. "But they're under constant supervision. If they're deemed too dangerous, they aren't permitted to visit at all. It's...unthinkable..."

"It's..." Aurora felt sick to her stomach. "It's a condition. Is there no cure?"

"No."

"But if the danger is only during...melding—" this was the Asari term for sexual intimacy.

"I am told it is a compulsion for them. They cannot resist the hunt, and they possess the ability to control the minds of anyone they encounter. Again," she added, "the strength of their abilities varies widely."

Aurora had at least a thousand more questions, but Tesizma ended the conversation before it could begin.

"Anyway, don't worry too much, Aurora. They'll have every authority in the country on her if they have to. Go home, take the afternoon off. The place is going to be chaos until the Ardat-Yakshi is caught."

She'd almost disappeared back into her office, but Aurora stopped her. "Tesizma? Are you all right?"

Tesizma's hand rested on the doorframe, knuckles whitening against the scaly blue of her skin. "I had...a run-in with an Ardat-Yakshi once," she said, quietly.

"But you're—?"

"Alive, yes. A Justicar saved me—they're a special kind of Asari law enforcement. At the very last second, no less. She burst into my apartment. The Ardat-Yakshi—she called herself Morinth—fled. And I..." Tesizma heaved a sigh, long and heavy. "I was left lost, confused, still drowning in the feelings her mind control had engendered in me, unable to believe that Morinth had only courted me intending to kill me..."

"I—" Aurora was at a loss. "I'm so sorry."

Tesizma shook her head, sighed again. "It was a long time ago. Get some rest, Aurora. I'll see you tomorrow. Surely by then this will be resolved."

It was a lovely afternoon, but Aurora felt chilled to the bone. She wrapped her arms tightly about herself as she walked, as though holding herself together. A large part of her was painfully unwilling to believe that her paradise could have such a fatal flaw. The main path between the Galactic Relations Embassy and Aurora's apartment complex was a mess of frenzied people running amok, so she ducked out of the madding crowd and set upon a less-traveled and more circuitous path.

The crowds thinned abruptly, and suddenly, like air sucked from her lungs, Aurora found that she was walking alone. She quickened her pace and held her head high, tried not to think about how this was the first time she'd ever been afraid to walk by herself on Thessia, then was abruptly mowed down by a herd of law enforcement.

She landed flat on her back, and scraped her hands on the pavement, but mercifully didn't hit her head. A few shouted, "Sorry, ma'am" over their shoulders, but most were utterly focused upon some unknown destination ahead of them. Aurora lay sprawled on the pavement for a moment, too stunned to move, and watched them go, her thoughts whirling with visions of what a Justicar or an Ardat-Yakshi might look like.

"Are you quite all right?" a voice wondered, from the direction the law enforcement had come. Aurora pushed herself up into a sitting position and whipped her head around to see an Asari with facial tattoos that gave her the effect of prominent, dramatically arched eyebrows (most Asari barely had any eyebrows to speak of) and tentacles that curved curiously upwards, giving her the silhouette of a creature with horns. The mysterious Asari offered Aurora her hand.

"Fine, thank you," said Aurora. The Asari helped her up, but she still felt a bit weak on her feet. She stumbled, and the Asari caught her by the elbows and steadied her. They locked eyes, and Aurora felt as though the breath had left her body. "They...were just in a hurry," she said, slowly, hazily. "I understand."

The mysterious Asari had black eyes, as though there were no irises to speak of, and the whites of her eyes seemed to glow subtly in the warm afternoon light. "Of course," she said. Her voice was deep and resonant. "There's an Ardat-Yakshi on the loose. You oughtn't to be walking alone."

Aurora recovered her balance, but she was loath to let go of the Asari's forearms. "Right, I know." She released her grip slowly, so slowly... "I was just going home."

The Asari offered her arm. "Allow me to escort you to your home," she said, with a small smirk that sent Aurora's thoughts whirling into disarray once more.

"I—thank you," said Aurora. "It's funny, I was just thinking...this is the first time I've ever felt afraid to walk alone since I've been on Thessia."

"Thessia is a wonderful place," said the mystery Asari. "I've missed it very much. Asari settlements away from the homeworld are not nearly so pleasant. The input of alien species on our culture has many positive concomitants, but in my experience, the influence of man is always a violent one."

Aurora let out a small, melancholy chuckle. "I hardly even noticed when I was on Earth. It was just a normal part of life there."

"What brought you to Thessia?"

"Some vague threat of an invasion," Aurora shrugged. "My parents and their friends all got together and decided they wanted their children off-world somewhere safe. All my friends from school are scattered across the galaxy now. The Asari seemed like such a fascination species, and Thessia such a paradise..."

"But you find your paradise tarnished," the Asari guessed.

Aurora frowned. "The Ardat-Yakshi panic...confuses me."

"Every world has its flaws," said the Asari. "Thessia just happens to have very few."

"Is that why the older Asari are against pureblooded Asari?" Aurora wondered. "Is no one looking for a cure for the Ardat-Yakshi condition? Are the Ardat-Yakshi happy in seclusion? Are they treated well? What do they do if they aren't allowed to see anyone? Are other Ardat-Yakshi immune to their powers?"

Now that the words had been given space to flow, there seemed no end to them. "I wanted to talk to my boss, but she was positively haunted by her experience with one. She said a Justicar saved her from an Ardat-Yakshi, and it seems like she's just spent the past who-knows-how-many-years devastated by the idea that this person she was so taken with had only seduced her meaning to kill her, and I wonder, was it like that? But I don't want to ask; perhaps that's a senseless question. Are the Ardat-Yakshi truly irredeemable? Is there no better solution than to shut them away from their people, from their homeworld?"

The mystery Asari regarded Aurora in silence for a moment, perhaps expecting her to ask another endless stream of useless questions. Finally, she responded, slow and deliberate. "A curious Human you are," she said. "The Human species is so new to galactic affairs. They seldom care for any concerns but their own. Not to say I don't understand, only that it's unusual to meet a human who has such care for a problem that belongs solely to the Asari."

"I like living on Thessia," said Aurora, and this assertion seemed flat and pallid compared to the deeper feelings for this place she could feel taking root within her soul. "Love it, actually. In some ways, I feel more at home here than I ever did on Earth. I just...want to understand, I suppose."

"It occurs to me that I haven't yet asked your name, O Noble Human," said the Asari thoughtfully.

"It's...Aurora."

"Aurora," the Asari echoed quietly, and the sound of Aurora's name upon her lips was the sweetest music she had ever heard. "It's a lovely name. Sounds almost Asari. I am called Maleficent."

"Maleficent..."

"And I am given to understand that the Ardat-Yakshi live very comfortably in seclusion, so long as they cause no trouble. I suppose it depends upon your perception whether utter aloneness sounds like a fair price to pay for considerable comfort. The curious bias against pureblooded Asari is rooted in a particularly bad historic epidemic of Ardat-Yakshi, but I am a bit too young to have a firsthand account of the details. I believe it is unknown whether other Ardat-Yakshi are immune to the powers of their kin, and while there have been efforts to cure the condition, they are often met with...surprising amounts of resistance," Maleficent tilted her head as though studying something in the distance, then held open the door of Aurora's building for her.

"On the matter of seduction as a purely predatory practice," she continued as they made their way towards the elevator, "I cannot say for sure, but I doubt that is the case. Which is an easier burden to bear? That someone who captivated your attention merely did so to get what she wanted from you, because she could not control herself, or that she captivated your attention because you captivated hers, and alas—" the elevator door closed, and it became suddenly, unnervingly, entrancingly clear that the whites of Maleficent's eyes were glowing independent of any light source "—in the end, she could never have done anything but to destroy you?"

"Which do you think is the truth?" Aurora breathed.

Maleficent's fingers, strangely long and thin, grazed the side of Aurora's cheek, and Aurora's eyes fell closed unbidden as a shudder of biotic energy coursed through her entire body. "Perhaps," said Maleficent, "it's a bit of both."

Again, Aurora felt off-balance, weak in the knees, and she found herself clutching at Maleficent's arms for support. The elevator stopped on her floor, and she led Maleficent towards her apartment as though pulled by some outside influence. She could not think clearly. She had the sense that she was privy to the pieces of a frightfully simple puzzle, yet she could not bring herself to fit them together. She felt dizzy and vulnerable and she was reluctant to let Maleficent leave her alone.

"I can't thank you enough for walking me home," said Aurora, and she realized that she couldn't look away from Maleficent's strange, glowing eyes. "Would you...have you time to come in? I confess I'd hate to see you go."

Maleficent's smile was at once thrilling and frightening, and it added itself to the pieces of the puzzle Aurora simply could not force into coherence. Her thoughts were overwhelmed by _don't leave, don't leave, you're beautiful, I can't look away, don't leave_ , and everything else seemed distant and impossible to grasp by comparison.

Aurora's previous experiences with sexual intimacy had been fumbling and awkward at best, and they'd never left her feeling particularly good about anything. This was something entirely different. They moved as though in a trance, as though utterly connected. The rest of the world faded away, and they might well have been anywhere—back on Earth, in the middle of a busy street, floating somewhere in the middle of deep space—and Aurora would have been none the wiser. The edges of her vision were black and blurry, and all she saw was Maleficent's eyes, all she heard was Maleficent's voice, all she felt was Maleficent's touch.

She thought, vaguely, she might be moaning, but she could not hear herself. She thought, vaguely, that she might be screaming, but she could scarcely feel the sensation in her own throat. She reached climax quickly and violently, but Maleficent would allow her no respite. Her vision blurred and darkened further as she reached another, and another, and she thought, vaguely, that she might be in pain, but she could hardly feel it, until all at once, just for a moment, everything stopped, and the world came crashing back into focus, and Aurora howled in agony, hands clutching her head, and she had something to say—she must! She must—!

But she was dying, she was going to die, and everything hurt, and she tasted blood, and the world was too bright and too real, and the thing that hurt most of all was not the throbbing promise of death in her brain but the dull, heavy ache in her chest. "You!" she shrieked. "It's you! You're the Ardat-Yakshi!"

"Shhh." The pain lessened ever so slightly, but it had been so intense that even a subtle change was an immense relief. She felt the disquieting tingle of biotic power and the cold rush of Medi-Gel coursing through her veins. She cracked open her eyes, but everything was too bright, too sharp, and there was Maleficent's face, beautiful and dangerous and thrilling and horrible and...and sad. Maleficent looked down at Aurora, and Aurora realized she didn't even know if she was lying on her bed or the couch or the floor.

"You'll survive," she said. There was a horrible, aching melancholy in her voice.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Aurora choked. Fresh tears welled in her eyes, and she realized this must be the exact memory that haunted Tesizma. "It felt so real!" she wept. "Was it all a lie?"

Maleficent lifted her gaze to the ceiling, but Aurora's eyes were too full of tears to make out her expression any longer. She stood, pressed her hands against Aurora's face and gave her another biotic shot of Medi-Gel, then turned to leave.

"Which burden would be easier to bear?" she wondered quietly, miserably, before the door closed behind her.


End file.
